Wealth Gaps in Education

• In Event: 246 - Regular Session. Schools, Social Mobility, and the Reproduction of Inequality

Abstract

The current literature on socio-economic inequalities in education has focused chiefly on changing income and class gaps in educational attainment. In this paper, I show that we should be at least as much if not more concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. For the first time, I document recent trends in educational attainment by parental wealth. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment is largely a consequence of growing wealth inequalities during the period studied here -- and raises concerns about the potentially profound consequences of further growing wealth gaps in more recent years on the educational opportunities of today's children.

Author

• Fabian T. Pfeffer, University of Michigan